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Folklife Center News
American Folklife Center
The Library of Congress
Fall 1992
Volume XIV, Number 4
ISSN 0149-6840 Catalog Card No. 77-649628
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The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S.
Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation,
reference service, live performance, exhibition, publication, and
training. The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture,
which was established in the Music Division of the Library of
Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of
ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.
Administration
Alan Jabbour, Director
Ray Dockstader, Deputy Director
Timothy Lloyd, Assistant to the Director
Doris Craig, Administrative Assistant
Hillary Glatt, Program Assistant
Camila Bryce-Laporte, Program Coordinator
Jennifer A. Cutting, Program Coordinator
Acquisitions
Joseph C. Hickerson, Head
Processing
Stephanie A. Hall, Archivist
Elaine Bradtke, American Memory Project
Catherine Hiebert Kerst, American Memory Project
Programs
Peter T. Bartis, Folklife Specialist
Mary Hufford, Folklife Specialist
David A. Taylor, Folklife Specialist
Publications
James Hardin, Editor
Public Events
Thea Caemmerer, Coordinator
Reference
Gerald E. Parsons, Reference Librarian
Judith A. Gray, Folklife Specialist
Administrative Office
Tel: 202 707-6590
Reference Service
Tel: 202 707-5510
Federal Cylinder Project
Tel: 202 707-1740
Board of Trustees
William L. Kinney, Jr., Chair, South Carolina
John Penn Fix III, Vice Chair, Washington
Nina Archabal, Minnesota
Lindy Boggs, Louisiana; Washington, D.C.
Carolyn Hecker, Maine
Robert Malir, Jr., Kansas
Judith McCulloh, Illinois
Juris Ubans, Maine
Ex Officio Members
James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
Robert McCormick Adams, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Anne-Imelda Radice, Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the
Arts
Lynne V. Cheney, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
Alan Jabbour, Director, American Folklife Center
FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS
James Hardin, Editor
Timothy Lloyd, Editorial Advisor
David A. Taylor, Editorial Advisor
John Biggs, Library of Congress Graphics Unit, Designer
Folklife Center News publishes articles on the programs and
activities of the American Folklife Center, as well as other
articles on traditional expressive culture. It is available free of
charge from the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center,
Washington, D.C. 20540-8100. Folklife Center News does not publish
announcements from other institutions or reviews of books from
publishers other than the Library of Congress. Readers who would
like to comment on Center activities or newsletter articles may
address their remarks to the editor.
FOLKLINE
For timely information on the field of folklore and folklife,
including training and professional opportunities and news items of
national interest, a taped announcement is available around the
clock, except during the hours of 9 A.M. until noon (eastern time)
each Monday, when it is updated. Folkline is a joint project of the
American Folklife Center and the American Folklore Society. Dial:
202 707-2000
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Editor's Note
Encounters with "the Other"
As 1992 approached, it became clear that the commemoration of
Columbus's voyage to America in 1492 could not be a celebration in
the sense that the Bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence
had been a celebration in 1976. Native American groups had staged
protests of Columbus Day celebrations long before 1992. A national
discussion of American multi-culturalism had brought about a new
understanding that different ethnic groups are affected by
historical events in different ways. For many, the question of
historical interpretation had become one of point of view.
Although some plans for official events honoring Columbus faltered
for lack of money and purpose, many Columbus Quincentenary
exhibits, films, and books appeared. Most of these presented
balanced, scholarly accounts that placed Columbus in the context of
his times and examined the immense consequences of his "discovery."
For example, an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, Seeds of
Change, described the exchange of foods among North and South
America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, as trade developed. A series on
PBS, "Columbus and the Age of Discovery," recreated the 1492 voyage
using both historical images and scenes from the present. The
Library of Congress exhibit and book, 1492: An Ongoing Voyage,
looked at the period 1450 to 1600 and described who was living in
North and South America, who came, and what happened as a result.
And the Folklife Center's exhibit and book, Old Ties, New
Attachments: Italian-American Folklife in the West, focused on the
lives of one immigrant group. Thus, instead of calling forth a
reiteration of schoolroom platitudes, 1992 became the occasion for
scholarly examination and public education.
One word that emerged to describe the events of five hundred years
ago was encounter. In this issue of Folklife Center News, Judith
Gray, ethnomusicologist and reference specialist for American
Indian collections at the Folklife Center, offers a number of
examples of what happens "When Cultures Meet." While the
consequences of "1492" for native peoples were overwhelming, Gray
notes that those who came to be known as American Indians were not
simply passive victims. The effects of encounter are more
complicated than the conquest and domination of one group by the
other. The Columbus landing was only the beginning of myriad
cultural exchanges that continue today.
If encounter describes what happened historically, the other
describes what was encountered psychologically. Although Columbus
sought trade routes to the East, he "discovered" something that was
both other than his expectations and other than anything in his
experience or imagination. In a second article, folklorist
Francesca McLean grapples with her discovery that the folk culture
being studied for the Center's Italian-Americans in the West
Project is her own. She must come to terms with the fact that "the
other" of the folklorist's study might well be herself, and is thus
forced to rethink some of the elements of her own developing
professional point of view.
Caption Correction
Simon J. Bronner, professor of folklore at Penn State, Harrisburg,
wrote to call attention to an error in a caption (Folklife Center
News, summer 1992, page 16). "In the caption for the sheet music
published by the Hebrew Publishing Company, the Yiddish
transliteration is incorrect. The transliteration you have is
Wieber and it is listed as Weiber on the sheet music. Actually, in
modern orthography the word is usually given as Veiber or Vaiber.
It's an unusual use of women in Yiddish; usually speakers use
Froyen from Di Froy. Dos Veib means wife; Veiber has the
connotation of married women or steady women."
The Last of the Folklife Annuals
The 1990 volume of Folklife Annual presents eleven articles on
scenic murals, photograph albums, costume, decoration, and
architectural design, all of which demonstrate how these forms are
used to establish the terms and boundaries of personal and
community life. The 176-page, clothbound book includes 156
illustrations, 45 in color.
The 1990 volume is the last in the series from the American
Folklife Center. Producing the volume each year became too
expensive for the Library's Publishing Office in a time of
shrinking budgets.
Copies of Folklife Annual 90 are still available from New Orders,
Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-
7954. The stock number is S/N 030-000-00230-0, and the price is
$19, which includes postage and handling. Make checks payable to
the Superintendent of Documents.
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When Cultures Meet
By Judith Gray
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October 12, 1492, was not the date of first contact between peoples
of the earth's two hemispheres; that much is clear. But it has
become the emblem for all that happens when societies first
experience one another. Consequently, the Columbian Quincentenary
has been marked by symposia, religious observances, concerts,
parades, publications, exhibits, food samplings, and many other
forms of cultural expression we commonly use to mark significant
occasions.
But apart from an understanding that 1492 was significant,
evaluations of--and reactions to--the events of that year and of
their consequences have not been unanimous: at one end of the
spectrum, there are celebrations of the spirit of discovery and the
subsequent development of ideas and ideals in the "New World"; on
the other, there is anger and mourning over the devastating
realities of political and cultural conquest. Those who negotiate
the gap between such divergent positions often use the term
encounter as a means of characterizing 1492 without immediately
assessing its aftermath.
As symbols, the two years, 1492 and 1992, are complicated. Neither
can be explained as a series of events; both represent processes
that can evoke the best or the worst, the most dogmatic or the most
flexible, the most straightforward or the most convoluted responses
from individuals who come face to face with "the Other." When
societies meet, members of each group evaluate what the other has
to offer. The items subject to such comparisons include material
goods, but also ways of acting and speaking, techniques for doing
things, ideas and ideals--the whole gamut of human cultural
expression. Both parties have opportunities to affirm, change, or
put aside items in their own cultural repertory; and, conversely,
to reject, adapt, or adopt items from the other. While the
political realities of the encounter may determine--and enforce--
certain changes, the manner in which ideas, materials, or
techniques are transferred across cultural boundaries is almost
always selective. Smaller societies are neither passive nor
entirely swallowed up by others, and even the dominant and
domineering are affected by contact with others. Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union bear testimony to the ways in which ethnic
identities can overwhelm national boundaries.
Cultural preferences and adaptations are found everywhere in
history and contemporary experience. The items or practices that
embody a society's sense of itself are apt to be cherished and
preserved intact precisely because they differentiate one society
from another. Other categories of expression will be more open to
outside influences. People may choose one set of behaviors for time
spent among themselves, while choosing another for relations with
members of another society. And, over time, the balance of these
choices may change.
Look, for example, at some facets of the early cultural contacts
between European and Indian people in the St. Lawrence River--Great
Lakes region. The Europeans who arrived on these shores in the
1500s and 1600s were not a homogeneous lot. They came with
different backgrounds and purposes, and interacted in different
ways with the indigenous people they encountered. The French were
among the first to follow the St. Lawrence River into the interior
of the continent; their first representatives were primarily
traders and Jesuit missionaries. Both groups sought out the
Indians, but to different ends.
The traders primarily wanted one item from their new trade
partners--furs. To persuade Indian hunters to change their
traditional patterns (to hunt small fur-bearing animals rather than
larger animals that were more practical sources of food), traders
had to determine what Indian people wanted in exchange. They
offered various European goods; tribal people evaluated and chose
those that made sense to them. Initially the items chosen were, by
and large, practical substitutes for objects already available. For
example, an iron cooking pot was more efficient in most
circumstances--and clearly more durable--than a bark vessel in
which food was cooked by means of heated rocks. Likewise, a metal
knife held its edge, and trading for one was certainly easier than
laboring to produce a stone implement. Guns were superior to bows
and arrows in range and deadly effect.
On the "artistic" side, glass beads quickly became a supplement and
sometimes a replacement for quillwork ornamentation. Quilling is a
very time-consuming process, and the natural dyes available to
people in the Great Lakes--St. Lawrence region formed a limited
palette. European glass beads came in many colors--although certain
colors were preferred (and those preferences varied from area to
area). But the use of beads in place of porcupine quills was more
than a time-saving adaptation. In certain contexts, glass beads
were associated with power believed to lie in naturally occurring
crystals. Beads also offered new possibilities: porcupine quills
are not easily worked into curvilinear designs, while beads on a
string can readily be shaped. Not all the groups who ultimately
opted to use beads modified their distinctive straight-edged
geometric patterns, but the curvilinear floral designs, perhaps
partially modeled on the French embroidery taught in mission
schools, became distinctive Great Lakes--St. Lawrence motifs. Thus
the presence of these new items--glass beads--accommodated both the
retention of traditional patterns and the expansion of the design
repertory.
Indian people were not passive partners in the trading process;
they made changes in their lives because they saw advantages to
doing so. Later on, when there were competing trading companies,
Indian trappers shopped around, looking for the best deals and the
best quality items--and they frequently traveled long distances to
do so. Economic self-interest operated on both sides of the trade
partnership.
To be sure, trade created needs and desires that were not present
earlier. Guns were clearly desirable for hunting but made the new
owners dependent on traders for an ongoing supply of powder and
bullets. The most pernicious "need" was created by the traders'
introduction of whiskey, with disastrous consequences for the
native people.
Both the French traders and Jesuit missionaries chose to live among
or in proximity to their Indian clients. They learned Indian
languages, and many of the traders took Indian wives and stayed on.
Individual Jesuits also stayed at their posts for years. The latter
realized that Christianity could best be introduced to Indian
communities by example and by building on concepts already found in
Indian cultures. So they studied their new neighbors closely,
sending back reports of observations and activities to Jesuit
superiors back in France.
But the opportunities for misinterpretation across cultural
boundaries were many, then as now. Consider the presumptions and
the patterns of thought underlying linguistic differences, for
example. Many of the tribal people in the St. Lawrence--Great Lakes
region spoke Algonquian languages. Algonquian verb forms differ,
depending on whether the speaker is reporting an event that he or
she personally witnessed or one that was related by another person.
Latin-trained grammarians labeled the latter feature the
"dubitative case," the doubtful case, suggesting thereby that a
speaker who used such verb forms was expressing some hesitancy
about the truth of his or her report. How then would a missionary
tell the narratives of the life of Christ? What verb forms would be
appropriate? What selections needed to be made to accommodate
theological realities of one party and linguistic practices of
those he was attempting to reach?
In intercultural encounters, something as fundamental as kinship
terminology could also present a problem. In some Indian cultures,
I would identify my biological mother and her sisters by the same
term, which is different from what I would call my father's
sisters. Correspondingly, I would address all the children of my
mother and her sisters as my siblings, while the children of my
father's sisters would be identified by a word comparable to
cousin. Imagine all the possible reactions of a European missionary
on hearing a single person identify two separate women as "my
mother" and of an Indian person hearing that a European trader had
married one of his mother's sisters' children. Such basic
differences in the patterns of organizing human experience may have
contributed to the misunderstandings that led some colonists, for
example, to self-righteous reaffirmation of their own ways of
perceiving the world and to total rejection of the worldviews of
others.
What about the impact of intercultural contact on the societies
back in Europe for whom traders and missionaries served as
middlemen? Beyond the proliferation of beaver-pelt hats, the effect
of Indian contact on the European societies was probably quite
limited initially. But over time, the accumulated reports
concerning such contacts contributed to the formation of ideas that
shaped subsequent European experiences of America: Rousseau's
notion of "the noble savage," for example, or the concept of the
frontier. These ideas became part and parcel of the Romantic
movement that swept both Europe and its colonies in the late-
eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
In the decades following American independence, many of the former
colonists and their descendants felt that separate identity had not
been achieved by virtue of a separate political structure. They
struggled to differentiate American culture from European, to
isolate that which was uniquely "New World," just as various
nations and ethnic groups in Europe were trying to identify what
was unique to them.
The push on both sides of the Atlantic for national identities was
reflected in the arts. Features of the Iroquoian confederacy
ultimately influenced the design of the constitution of the United
States, but the image (rather than the reality) of "the Indian" was
seized upon as the very epitome of the New World and used by
artists, dramatists, poets, novelists, and composers. One
manifestation of this use of American Indian imagery to serve
nationalistic expression was the school of "Indianist" composers of
the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, men such as
Edward MacDowell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Thurlow Lieurance,
Carlos Troyer.
The timing of this movement is ironic. By the late-nineteenth
century, the Indian wars were over. Indian people had been confined
on reservations, and the official government policy was designed to
squelch Indian culture and to turn the people into upstanding
citizen-farmers divorced from their heritage. But artists and
composers reflected the dominant society's fascination with the
people they had "subdued." So while some genuine Indian song genres
were disappearing (since the occasions for their use had been
suppressed), composers were choosing and adapting elements of
Indian song for their own work, precisely in order to establish a
uniquely American content, if not style.
The operative words here are choosing and adapting. Certain
elements of Indian song styles could easily be used by American-
born but typically European-trained composers; other elements were
not assimilated so easily into musical structures built on harmony
and into a musical aesthetic that preferred an open-throated
singing style. When we listen, for example, to a choral setting of
the "Navajo War Dance," composed by Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), we
do not have the illusion that we are hearing an Indian song. But
the elements of Navajo style that caught his attention are clear:
the sparse sound (few harmonies), the typical Navajo melodic skips,
the vocables (non-lexical syllables like "way ya ha hi"--not
characteristic Navajo vocables, but vocables nonetheless), the
pulsing beat. Farwell wrote:
This chorus is so notated as to bring out the inner pulsations of
the Indian voice, as observed in the Indians' singing of songs of
this type in the Southwest.1
Farwell got his ideas about Indian music from visits to some
southwestern reservations, from transcribing cylinder recordings of
Indian songs collected in California by Charles Lummis, and from
the study of transcriptions of melodies collected by Alice
Fletcher, a noted scholar of Omaha ceremonial traditions.
Other composers were also inspired by Fletcher's work and borrowed
material from her collections. The opening motif and the basic
melodic outline for what is perhaps the most famous Indianist
composition, Charles Wakefield Cadman's "From the Land of the Sky
Blue Waters" (published in l90l) are fairly literal reproductions
of an Omaha flute call and love song in Fletcher's collection. But,
unlike Farwell, Cadman did not try to replicate Indian sounds. It
is unlikely that a listener could guess that the melody had been
borrowed from an Indian source, since Cadman embedded the tune in
pure Euro-American harmonic structures and rhythms and all the
conventions of accompanied solo song. What stands out more as
"Indian" is the song's narrative, describing a fearless captive
maid courted by a flute-player.
It is the text that marks many an Indianist composition, but the
words are not usually those of direct tribal experience. While
there is ample documentation of Indian oratorical eloquence,
Indianist compositions seldom reflect it. For example, another of
Cadman's songs, "The Moon Drops Low," includes the verse:
Our glory sets like the sinking moon;
The Red Man's race shall be perished soon;
Our feet shall trip where the web is spun,
For no dawn shall be ours, and no rising sun.
The texts that many of the Indianists chose to set to music are
filled with similar elegaic evocations of past glory, supposedly
the words of an heroic race at the brink of extinction. There is a
passivity here that does not do justice to the struggles of Indian
people over that which was happening to and around them. The images
selected for Indianist compositions (and, indeed, even in some more
recent songs about Indians by non-Indian composers) are just that:
selections from a much broader array of Indian experiences, past
and present. Would anyone know from such images that Native people
had traditions of straightforwardly reciting achievements and
victories, let alone an everyday world of work, education,
childrearing, food preparation, and negotiating with government
agencies?
The Indianists were Romantics who seized upon universal themes of
love, war, and death cloaked in American Indian dress. Products of
their times, the Indianists responded to and in turn reinforced
prevailing stereotypes. Arthur Farwell also had the following to
say about the piano version of his "Navajo War Dance":
Too many people think of the American Indian only as a "savage." I
had in my Indian music depicted many phases of Indian life that
were far from savage, but true to its quaint, poetic and
picturesque aspects, as well as to its mythological conceptions.
Being criticized because of these matters, as being untrue to this
"savage" Indian nature, I wrote the "Navajo War Dance" in the hope
of gratifying my critics.
Thus he protested the stereotyped image--but proceeded to
contribute to it.
Even when composers such as Farwell and Cadman had actual fieldwork
experience, their music was most often a superficial evocation of
Indian sounds and ideas. This is borne out as well in the
iconography on the sheet music for these compositions or the
posters of the lecture-concert tours such composers and affiliated
singers were apt to make: vignettes of tepees, borders made of
arrows, photos of Anglo singers in buckskin with feathers in their
hair.
Generally, the aural and visual images invoked in Indianist
compositions are undifferentiated--they concern "the Red Man," "the
Indian," and thus reflect the European and Euro-American tendency
to see Indian culture as monolithic. Tribal distinctions did not
seem to register with those who were not directly involved with
Indian individuals. Much of that tendency carries over into the
present. Indian people, however, know themselves as members of
specific groups; tribal affiliation is a primary source of
identification.
But identity labels are often context-dependent, sometimes chosen,
sometimes assigned. For example, depending on the circumstances, I
could say that I am German-American, white, a Protestant, a
Wisconsinite, a Midwesterner, an American. One of those identities-
-Midwesterner--became mine only after I moved to the East Coast. I
was not aware of myself as Midwestern until I encountered a lot of
people who weren't. On a larger scale, but in similar ways, ethnic
groups and whole societies literally are defined or define
themselves in cultural encounters.
It might reasonably be claimed that the concept of "the American
Indian" is a product of contact; though there were precontact
tribal confederacies, "the American Indian," the pantribal
identity, probably did not exist before. Prior to contact with
Europeans, there was no inside need for a level of identity that
included tribal neighbors as well as rivals or enemies, that
spanned a continent or an entire hemisphere--and no outside view to
lump together people as diverse as the Kwakiutl, the Hopi, the
Cuna, the Pawnee, the Cree, the Natchez, the Tarahumara. Regardless
of how the terms came into being, however, "American Indian" and
"Native American" are now recognized concepts both inside and
outside the societies so identified. And frequently the category
"American Indian" takes precedence over specific tribal
affiliation.
One important way in which pantribal identity is expressed is
through song. Featured, for example, at one Library of Congress
event was a local drum group that included singers identified as
Arizona Pima and Kansas Potawatomi. The style of songs the group
performed, however, was representative of Northern Plains rather
than of the Eastern Woodlands or the Southwest or central Plains.
Over time, a few particular images of American Indian people have
been selected as the images of "the Indian." Visually, that image
is often the male fancy dancer in feather regalia; aurally, it is
the wide-range Northern Plains-style song, having characteristic
forms and being sung with tense throat and pulsating voice.
Of all Indian song styles, the Northern Plains sound is probably
the most different from Euro-American singing, and the most
difficult aural pattern for a non-Indian to assimilate, let alone
to replicate. Older Indian people often lament that young men are
neglecting their specific tribal heritage for the sake of singing
these pantribal songs, heard at powwows across the country. But
this aural image of "Indian-ness" functions as a significant
boundary for Indian and non-Indian societies. By differentiating as
much as possible from the dominant culture, by staking out that
which is most markedly unique and displaying it to the outside
world, the selection of Northern Plains song-style helps to confirm
cultural identities and borders. The music and the etiquette of
its performance embrace all Native Americans as insiders, set apart
from the dominant Euro-American culture.
But even as the Indianist composers selected sounds or notions
about Indian music for their purposes, contemporary Indian groups
choose and adapt certain items from Euro-American musical practice.
In making such choices, they are not passive recipients of Euro-
American musical imperialism but participants in a dynamic
interchange of cultural items. For example, while many drum groups
use a wooden drum covered with rawhide, others choose a Western-
style bass drum turned on its side; in its decoration and use, it
becomes an instrument of Indian identity.
Some tribes have adopted European instrumental traditions and
musical genres and made them their own. Quite a few Canadian and
Alaskan indigenous people, for example, have adopted the fiddle as
a means of cultural self-expression; in fact, there is now a yearly
music festival and competition for Athabascan fiddlers. Such
activities may reflect Euro-American influence, but
native expressive traditions are also represented, for example, in
the way songs are introduced, typically identifying the source and
the occasion for the song's composition, and in accompanying
activities, such as the community feasts.
Similar examples of cultural expression tied to syncretism are
found in Indian rock music. One of the best-known groups from the
Southwest, XIT, released an album called "Relocation" in 1977
(Canyon Records 7121-C). Here, Indian youth, immersed in teen
popular culture, encountered songs using standard rock
instrumentation and style that addressed non-mainstream topics. For
example, the song "Nothing Could Be Finer Than a 49'er" refers to
a widespread Indian social dance genre; its text even incorporates
an allusion to one of the most well-known 49'er songs ("One-eyed
Ford"), and at the end of the piece, the musicians overlaid the
rock-song foundation with the sound of a traditional drum group
singing a 49'er. But on the same album, there is also a song called
"Christopher Columbus," including these lyrics:
Christopher Columbus, what have you done to us?
They give you the credit, and the whole world's read it,
But we discovered you--I said, we discovered you!
This song, though addressed to the archetypal non-Indian and his
kind, is on an album distributed primarily to Indian audiences and
thus only incidentally tweaks the nose (or pricks the conscience)
of the establishment. Though the song has all the aural patterns of
mainstream rock that originated in non-Indian culture, the real
audience here is the group identified in the lyrics as "we" rather
than "you" or "they." As stated in a recent discussion about
musical multiculturalism, "[even when] a culture . . . no longer
control[s] the production of all of its music . . . it still
listens with its own ears."2
A last example comes from Mormon-inspired music recorded about
twenty years ago and directed to an Indian audience. Songs such as
"Proud Earth," composed by Arliene Nofchissey Williams, a Navajo
student at Brigham Young University, express Mormon respect for
tribal ways and the hope for broader unity. In the recording, the
nationally known performer Chief Dan George recites the text while
Nofchissey sings it:
The beat of my heart is kept alive in my drum . . .
I am one with nature, Mother Earth is at my feet,
And my God is up above me, and I'll sing the song of my People.3
Particularly fascinating in such songs is the use of some of the
same aural images of Native American music that the Indianist
composers had chosen: the drum beat, the vocables, the flute, the
shaken bells or rattles, all in conjunction with string orchestra
and mixed chorus. This time around, such elements seem to be chosen
in order to single out the Indian audience, to say "This is for
you."
The sights and sounds of other forms of contemporary cross-cultural
borrowing are everywhere, not just in music. We could just as
easily look, for example, at the tendency in the environmental
movement to hold up a generalized "American Indian" as the ideal
model of human interrelatedness with nature. Or we could look at
advertising, or at the New Age fascination with shamanism, sweat
baths, and the sound of Indian flutes.
What is important, in the context of this article, is not an
assessment of the social effects of such borrowing (or, in some
cases, possible misusing or at least misunderstanding) but rather
an awareness that, in each of these instances, two societies have
come into contact. In the process, each has recognized some aspects
in its own and in the other culture that touch a nerve--some
aspects to be rejected outright, others to be affirmed, some to be
deliberately appropriated for use in ways that speak to members of
the same group or to the other.
Cultural encounter is performance, the expression or enactment of
that which is significant to a society in all domains--artistic,
economic, linguistic, political, and religious, to name some
possibilities. Contact with "the other" is not a one-time-only
event but a complicated, ongoing process of dynamic interchange in
which selectivity is a key word for all participants. In the course
of such contacts, we have opportunities to examine that which
unites and that which divides us, all that we hold in common and
all that makes us unique. In this way, what began five hundred
years ago is far from over.
Notes
1. This and the following quotation by Farwell are taken from the
liner notes for New World Rcords NW 213, a collection of Indianist
compositions by Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Preston Ware
Orem.
2. Marc Perlman, in his opening remarks for an electronic-mail
conference on multiculturalism and ethnomusicology, April 16, 1992.
3. Salt City Records SC-60, no date; reissued by Proud Earth
Productions in 1990.
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The Folklorist Becomes the Folk
By Francesca McLean
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 1989, when I heard about the American Folklife Center's Italian-
Americans in the West (IAW) project, it occurred to me to apply for
a fieldwork position. But I was a graduate student studying for
comprehensive exams at the time, so I put the thought of fieldwork
out of my mind. I had all but forgotten the project by September of
1992 when I took a part-time job in collections processing for the
Center's Archive of Folk Culture. I didn't pay much attention to
the IAW project other than to note that an exhibit was about to
open and staff were working hard on it--even though I am both a
folklorist and an Italian-American from the West.
The history of the Italian side of my family is very typical of
Italian immigrants to the West. Both sets of my maternal great-
grandparents migrated from Italy to the San Francisco Bay Area in
the late 1800s. The Marsalas, my nonno's (grandfather's) parents,
survived the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. My biznonna
(great-grandmother) then insisted that the family move to the East
Bay. They opened first a livery stable and then a grocery store in
El Cerrito, a small town on the north border of Berkeley. There
Concetta and my great-grandfather Anthony raised Joseph, my nonno,
Mary, James, Frances, and Lillian. Little did she know the move put
them almost directly on top of the Hayward fault.
Meanwhile, the Maggiora's, my nonna's (grandmother's) family made
their home in Wine Haven, a wine-making community at the foot of
the Richmond side of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. My great-
grandfather Marcellino worked for a winery until Prohibition, when
everyone was left without work and the town effectively ceased to
exist. He and his first wife, Francesca (my namesake), had four
daughters, Laura (my nonna), Livia, Eda, and Lena. My great-
grandfather moved the family a few miles south to the small town of
Albany, where the girls grew up. Eventually, Laura Maggiora met and
married Joseph Marsala and they had children of their own,
Charmaine and Anthony. My mother and uncle grew up speaking Italian
at home and English at school.
For my sister and me, Italian-American cultural influences were one
generation removed from our mother's experience and, thus, diluted.
Yet there were plenty of cultural ties that were part and parcel of
our family circumstances. We were a close-knit extended family, and
I saw my grandparents every weekend. As the family grew and spread,
we often traveled to Morgan Hill, an hour and a half south of our
home in Oakland, on the southern edge of what became Silicon
Valley. Both my Aunt Eda (Pedrizetti) and Aunt Lena (Borgnino)
married farmers. Uncle John Pedrizetti eventually bought vineyards
and a winery, and Uncle Louis Borgnino, a prune ranch. My
grandparents spoke English as well as Italian, so my sister and I
didn't need to learn Italian to communicate with them (they still
speak Italian in public when the matter at hand is not for "public
consumption," and my mother speaks to me in Italian under the same
conditions). Pasta is the family staple dish, and as I grew up I
learned how to make various sauces.
One day at the Folklife Center, as I stood looking over the
shoulder of one of my colleagues at proof sheets from the IAW
project, I made an amazing discovery. There on the sheet was the
image of a gravestone with the Pedrizetti name inscribed. The
project fieldworkers had been working with my very family and a
section of narrative from Phyllis Pedrizetti about my family was to
be included in the exhibit. Suddenly, I realized that my own family
had been identified as the folk, "the other," part of that body of
people I studied and sought to understand, but always stood apart
from. All at once and with a jolt, I found myself symbolically on
"the other" side of the microphone, transformed from folklorist to
folk. My colleagues wryly congratulated me on my newfound status
and joked about my increased value to the professional community;
I could now program myself into public presentations as both a
folklorist and an informant on Italian-American culture in the
West. Or could I?
I read the fieldnotes and listened to the taped interviews the
Center's researchers made with my cousins. As I heard their voices,
I could see them in my mind's eye. I began to recall family
memories, but my nostalgic mental journey was interrupted by two
unfamiliar voices asking questions. The answers revealed parts of
my family history that I'd never heard. I wanted to ask more
questions, fill in more parts of the picture. But, I also felt a
strange sense of violation, as if the presence of two fieldworkers
with a microphone invaded my privacy and trespassed on my ownership
of this family history. On the one hand, I was excited to have part
of my life experience recognized as important; on the other hand,
I was ambivalent about my family being the topic of research. If my
family's history was shared with the general public through
inclusion in an exhibit, would it any longer have special meaning
for me?
My feelings of excitement were understandable to me both personally
and professionally; my feelings of invasion were not. In order to
sort them out, I had to examine the differences between my public,
folklorist self, and my private self. As an ethnographer I know
that as soon as field research begins, my informants become subject
to my professional standards and values. I had to examine the
values I applied to my work and then determine whether they
remained constant when my own family was the subject of research;
or if the IAW Project held itself to a similar set of values I
could approve.
In exploring traditional culture in people's daily lives,
folklorists often are entrusted with very personal and intimate
details. Consequently, folklorists who wish to present the results
of their research in a book, a film, or a public program are often
faced with a dilemma: which of these details, if any, should be
made public? The folklife festival is the form of public
presentation with which I have had the most experience, and it was
on the basis of this festival experience that I reacted with
ambivalence to my family's inclusion in the Center's exhibit.
When I am producing a festival I must balance a number of
considerations. Curatorial matters, such as who to include and how
to present the larger context that envelopes their tradition, vie
for equal attention with production details such as the design and
fabrication of demonstration and performance space. Underlying
these decisions are ethical considerations, for example, the
fairness of featuring one group to represent a community tradition
shared by many, and the effects on the future practice of tradition
by that selected group. The festival is a "frame" in which very
specific purposes are served. As an event producer I control and
shape information that informants and participants share with me
(as much as anyone producing programs in the public sector can be
in control of any event). I had never before thought that my
personal and family history would be presented at a festival, or in
any other public format. I often share the details of my own life
with those I know, trust, and like, but I have never considered
creating a display that featured them.
Why had this possibility never occurred to me? Like many members of
a cultural community, I did not think my family and experience were
in any way distinctive. When I found that the attention of the
American Folklife Center had been focused on it, I began to realize
that my "normal" experience was a very particular one, and that my
family was part of exactly the kind of ethnic community any
folklorist might study.
But when the Center staff decided what part of my family narrative
to feature in the exhibit, I had no part in the decision. I was
unfamiliar with the motives and points of view of the researchers
and with the exhibit as a form of public presentation. My personal
reaction mirrored a professional concern every fieldworker and
presenter has felt at one time or another throughout his or her
career: in what "frame" do we present the personal details of a
person's cultural life? Folklorists' relationships with the people
they study are complicated. We seek to maintain objectivity and
intellectual and personal distance and do so, in part, by labeling
them "informant" or "participant." But we are often deeply touched
by the lives and traditions of the people we work with, and
friendships can blossom. In staging a folklife festival, the
relationship between folklorist and folk becomes one of
collaboration. Circumstances and the exhibit format did not allow
that kinds of collaboration between myself and the Center during
the research and design phase of the IAW exhibit. Would I be
comfortable, I wanted to know, with the "frame" of the IAW exhibit?
Old Ties, New Attachments, the folklife exhibit based on the
Center's Italian-Americans in the West Project focused on the
maintenance of traditional culture through ethnic group and family
ties and on the dynamics of change within these communities as time
passed (see Folklife Center News, summer 1992). One of the places
the project carried out field research is California's Santa Clara
Valley. Historically significant as an agricultural region (once
known as the "garden spot of the world"), the valley soil is rich
and still supports family farms and wineries. In the past twenty
years, however, as the urban development of San Jose sprawled
southward, considerably less acreage has been devoted to
agriculture. The Center chose the valley because of the large
number of Italian-American, family-owned and -operated small
businesses, some of which have been in the same families for
generations. The cultural base upon which the businesses began is
still intact and flourishing, as younger generations continue
family and community traditions and add their own. In contrast to
the Napa and Sonoma Valleys to the north, where wine-making
attracts wine makers and tourists from around the world, the Santa
Clara Valley remains strongly rooted in traditional Italian and
Italian-American working-class culture. It also remains the seat of
the maternal side of my family.
The Pedrizetti Winery is a good example of the kind of Italian-
American family-owned and -operated business the project chose to
study. My Aunt Eda and Uncle John Pedrizetti of Morgan Hill,
California, bought the winery in the 1940s, operated it for years
and eventually turned it over to their son Ed and his wife,
Phyllis, when they retired. The wine-making community in the valley
is old and established, and many members belong to Italian-American
families who have been in the state for over a century. The wine
makers know each other through ethnic as well as occupational ties,
and as Folklife Center fieldworkers discovered to meet and talk
with one family is equivalent to gaining access to the whole
community.
Different frames are appropriate and necessary for the effective
presentation of different aspects of traditional culture.
Traditional music may lend itself easily to presentation on a
festival stage when its usual performance context is a public one.
Although there are many people for whom narrating becomes a
performance, personal details of cultural life are not so easily
presented in the festival frame. Once I got over the discomfort of
sharing my family history with the "public at large," I saw that
the framework of the IAW exhibit, with its specific foci and its
venues in the communities who contributed to it, was an appropriate
frame for the presentation of my family' experience within the
larger cultural contexts that encompass it.
For any folklorist, there is a dynamic tension between the desire
to present folk culture in public contexts and the ethical need to
be mindful of the life details people share in trust and
friendship. That tension, I realize now, is one to I want to work
with rather than seek to resolve for it requires me to periodically
questions my motives and goals as a professional folklorist.
Francesca McLean is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of
Pennsylvania, writing a dissertation on the repertoire of mandolin
player Red Rector, of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Significant Acquisitions to the Folk Archive in 1992
By Joseph C. Hickerson
During the period from October 1991 to September 1992, Folk Archive
activities suffered from a staff shortage and the Center's move to
newly renovated quarters in the Library's Thomas Jefferson
Building. As a result, acquisitions activity was significantly
curtailed. Nevertheless, we can report a variety of interesting
additions to the Archive of Folk Culture. The following report
describes collections comprising especially large bodies of
material, those of particular interest to folklore,
ethnomusicology, and related areas of study, and those that
exemplify the wide variety of format categories and subject matters
represented in the collections. I hope readers will be inspired to
consider the Archive of Folk Culture as a repository for their
collections and publications.
To begin with, the Folk Archive has received an important group of
recordings from the collection of the late Ida Halpern of
Vancouver, British Columbia. Dr. Halpern, a Viennese-trained
ethnomusicologist, moved to Canada in 1939, and there she began
documenting the music of Northwest Indians. Before her death in
1987, Dr. Halpern expressed interest in giving the Library of
Congress an opportunity to acquire portions of her collection. In
anticipation of this event, Dr. Halpern donated to the Archive in
1976 a photocopy of the index and catalog cards that describe the
songs she collected from British Columbia Indians over a thirty-
five year period. The present acquisition has been donated by the
Provincial Archives of British Columbia, the official repository of
the Ida Halpern collection. It consists of seventeen seven-inch and
three five-inch audiotapes of one of Dr. Halpern's most prolific
informants, Kwakiutl chief and master singer Mungo Martin. On these
recordings, which were made in 1951-52 in Vancouver, Mr. Martin
performs over one hundred songs, a number of which were acquired
from such neighboring tribes as the Bella Bella, Bella Coola,
Haida, and Nootka. Included are dance songs, feast songs, game
songs, hunting songs, love songs, thank-you songs, and war songs.
Also included with the tapes is a copy of a hundred-page inventory
of the complete Halpern collection.
Mike Seeger of Lexington, Virginia, has supplemented his
collections of field recordings in the Archive with the addition of
archival quality duplications of fifty-eight hours of audiotape,
primarily taken from his original reels numbered fourteen through
sixty-nine. The bulk of this group of recordings was made in the
late 1950s and document a number of aspects of Appalachian folk
music as well as early forms of bluegrass and country music. Also
included are recordings of several members of the Seeger family. In
addition to the tapes, Seeger has provided complete logs on four
diskettes.
D. Michael Battey of Clearwater, Florida, has contributed twelve
seven-inch audiotapes of singer/storyteller Frank Proffitt, Jr., of
Beech Mountain, North Carolina. These recordings contain oral
history as well as a variety songs and stories, many of which were
learned from the performer's father, the late Frank Proffitt. The
elder Proffitt was a prolific source of songs for collectors Frank
C. Brown, Frank and Anne Warner, and Folk-Legacy Records from the
late 1930s through the 1960s, all of which are represented in the
Archive's collections. It was Frank Sr.'s version of "Tom Dooley,"
as recorded by the Kingston Trio in 1957, that sparked the
commercial "folk boom" of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dr. Batty
used one of the Center's Nagra recorders to make these tapes.
Art Thieme of Peru, Illinois, has donated a typed manuscript
entitled "Songs of the Life, Times and Assassination of President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy." The collection includes approximately one
hundred song texts, with source information, collected by Thieme
over the period 1960-90 from a variety of sources and musical
genres.
Robert Caulk has contributed a variety of materials concerning
international folk dance that were gathered and compiled by his
mother, Ruth Feuer Caulk, in connection with her work at settlement
schools in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. Included in the
gift are 257 five-by-eight-inch cards and nine sheets containing
folk dance instructions, twelve folk dance and dance music books,
two pamphlets, and one article.
Six videotapes featuring Russian and Armenian folk dance and song
have been donated by Alexander Medvedev, musicologist and chairman
of the Musicology and Folklore Commission, Union of Composers of
the former Soviet Union. The videos were brought to the Archive by
Michael Levner of the Library's Moscow office. Included on the
videos are the professional dance theater at the State Institute of
Theatrical Arts, Russia; a men's choir; Cossack dances; and dances
performed in village settings.
Stuart Jay Weiss of Staten Island, New York, has donated a unique
sixteen-inch, instantaneous, single-face acetate disc containing an
"audition" by Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter for the National
Broadcasting Company. Dated June 19, 1940, the fifteen-minute
segment includes seven songs performed by Leadbelly, with an
introduction and narration by Woody Guthrie.
Joe Broadman of Carmel, California, has donated a cassette
containing twenty-five songs performed in May 1961 in Minneapolis
by Bob Dylan. Twenty-three of the songs are traditional folksongs
or Woody Guthrie compositions; two are early Dylan compositions. In
addition, Broadman has contributed ten published song collections,
four song sheets, five periodical issues, nine ephemera, and a page
containing "Songs and Poems" from the May 1, 1934, issue of Semi-
Weekly Farm News (Dallas).
Mark Schoenberg of Port Jefferson, New York, has donated eighteen
periodicals and a number of photographs, souvenir/song books, and
ephemera dealing with bluegrass music in the early 1960s. Included
are songs books from Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys and Don
Reno and Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups containing autographs
of members of the two ensembles.
The University of Nebraska Library has donated a photocopy of a
rare thirteen-page mimeographed collection of "Negro jokes"
compiled by the late Sterling Brown, presumably in the late 1930s.
John Reynolds of New York City has donated over one hundred
newspaper and magazine articles and other ephemera, principally
concerning Leadbelly, Odetta, Elija Pierce, and Bill Taylor.
Douglas Meade of College Park, Maryland, has donated a 1,179-page
printout of his late father Guthrie T. Meade's annotated
discography of traditional songs and tunes on hillbilly recordings.
He has also generated and contributed a 41-page index to the
discography. Guy Logsdon of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has donated a 20-page
printout of his discography of the published and unpublished
recordings of Woody Guthrie.
Joe Glazer of Silver Spring, Maryland, has donated nineteen LPs,
seventeen cassettes, and one compact disc from his Collector Record
label. The recordings cover a variety of labor and union topics.
The Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife Programs and
Cultural Studies has donated twenty-five LP recordings on the
Smithsonian Folkways label.
Among serial publications donated are the following: Richard K.
Spottswood of University Park, Maryland, has donated approximately
350 serial publications, primarily dealing with bluegrass and
blues. J. A. "Ted" Theodore of El Cajon, California, has donated
168 issues of the San Diego Folk Song Society Newsletter, along
with 4 other periodical issues and 23 ephemeral publications
dealing with folk music in the San Diego area. Sam and Eleanor
Simmons of the Somers Traditional Folk Club of Malvern,
Worcestershire, England, have contributed 6 directories and 17
journals and newsletters published by that organization over the
past ten years. Kip Lornell has loaned us 33 issues of Blues &
Rhythm for photocopying to complete our set of this important
magazine from England. Twenty-five issues of News from Native
California have been received from its publisher in Berkeley,
California. Eighteen issues of the Jewish Storytelling Newsletter
have been received from the Jewish Storytelling Center in New York
City. In addition, our recommendations have resulted in the receipt
of 138 issues of the International Journal of the Sociology of
Language, 42 issues of the Folk Music Conflict Calendar, 17 issues
of Autoharp Clearinghouse, 11 issues of the Journal of Negro
History, 34 issues of Chinese Music, 47 issues of Them Days (Happy
Valley - Goose Bay, Labrador), 20 issues of Native Peoples
(Phoenix, Arizona), and 26 issues of ArMen, a cultural magazine
from Breton, France.
Watch this column next year for such pending acquisitions as the
Italian-Americans in the West Project, Ukrainian cylinders of blind
bardic singers, collections from John Niles, Jeff Titon, and
Henrietta Yurchenco, and, time, staff, and space willing, many
more.
..............................................................
Folklife Center News Fall 1992: Captions
Cover: Grand entry at the 1984 Omaha Tribal Powwow in Macy,
Nebraska. While traditions differ from tribe to tribe, the male
fancy dancer, like those pictured here, has become one of the
representative images for American Indians generally. (227546-4-25-
26) Photo by Dorothy Sara Lee
La Terra de Hochelaga nella Nova Francia. Impression of the
fortified Indian town Hochelaga, published in Gian Battista
Ramusio's Terzo volume delle navigationi et viaggi . . . [Venetia]
1556. The engraver attempts to render a 1535 description by Jacques
Cartier: a populous village, "circular and . . . completely
enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid."
Within the wooden palisade, Cartier found "some fifty houses . . .
each of fifty or more paces in length, and twelve or fifteen in
width, built completely of wood and covered in or bordered up with
large pieces of the bark and rind of trees . . . which are well and
cunningly lashed after their manner." Within each of these large
houses, many Indian families lived in common. The hill to the left,
Monte Real, is now covered by the modern Canadian city of Montreal.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
Carte geographique de la Nouvelle Franse . . . facit en 1612. From
Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages du sieur Samuel de Champlain
Xaintongeois, Paris, 1613. Engraving made from a drawing by Samuel
de Champlain as a result of his voyages to New France. The figures
depicted are Montagnais and Almouchiquas peoples; also shown are
native plants and animals. Rare Book and Special Collections
Division, Library of Congress
A flyer used to advertise concerts by Indianist composer Thurlow
Lieurance. Note that Lieurance wears a tuxedo, while the singer,
his wife, is in "Indian" dress, with furry headband and dress
ornamentation. The border of the flyer also mixes generic flowers
with an approximation of design motifs found in Plains quill- and
beadwork. Archive of Folk Culture
Sheet music covers for Indianist compositions by Thurlow Lieurance
and Charles Wakefield Cadman. Note the design motifs: lone Indian
males next to trees, tepees, the moon, and the setting sun. The
illustrations convey a sense of closeness to nature as well as an
impression, perhaps, that songs are individualistic expressions
removed from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Music Division,
Library of Congress
Farwell composed several settings of "Navajo War Dance." This piano
version (1905) shows the steady drum-like beat in the left hand and
the right-hand melody built on skips rather than on adjacent tones.
Note his instructions on how the piece is to be played: "with
severe precision of rhythm throughout, and savagely accented."
Music Division, Library of Congress
Newspaper articles such as this one from the Fairbanks Daily News-
Miner convey the popularity of Athabascan fiddling, while
identifying both the historical-traditional aspects and striking
new elements of these performances.
Winery proprietors Ed and Phyllis Pedrizzetti being interviewed in
their office at Pedrizzetti Winery, Morgan Hill, California, by
American Folklife Center fieldworkers Russell Frank and Paola
Tavarelli. (IAW-KL-B132-35) Photo by Ken Light
Frames from a contact sheet of photos taken in an Italian cemetery,
showing the Pedrizzetti family head stone. Francesca McLean
experienced a shock of recognition when she noticed these pictures
on the desk of a colleague at the Folklife Center. (IAW-DT-B012-
10A-11 & 11A-12) Photos by David A.Taylor
Frank Proffitt, Jr., plays a five-string banjo made by Tut Taylor.
D. Michael Battey made the photograph in 1991 during his in-depth
recorded interview with Proffitt at the home of Clifford Glenn home
in Sugar Grove, North Carolina.
Independence, Virginia, banjo player and string-band musician Wade
Ward is shown here with his wife and mother-in-law, Granny Porter,
1957. Ward is among many Appalachian folk musicians featured in the
collections of tapes acquired from Michael Seeger. Photo by Michael
Seeger
Ed Pedrizzetti at his winery in Morgan Hill, California, 1989. One
of the participants in the Folklife Center's Italian-Americans in
the West Project, Pedrizzetti is also the uncle of folklorist
Francesca McLean, whose comment on finding her family the subject
of study begins on page . (IAW-KL-B130-36-36A) Photo by Ken Light
On the cover of Folklife Annual 90, graffiti artist Chino Rodriguez
painting a final tribute to his brother Danny, 1990. Photo by
Martha Cooper
Folklife Center News Fall 1992: Captions
Cover: Grand entry at the 1984 Omaha Tribal Powwow in Macy,
Nebraska. While traditions differ from tribe to tribe, the male
fancy dancer, like those pictured here, has become one of the
representative images for American Indians generally. (227546-4-25-
26) Photo by Dorothy Sara Lee
La Terra de Hochelaga nella Nova Francia. Impression of the
fortified Indian town Hochelaga, published in Gian Battista
Ramusio's Terzo volume delle navigationi et viaggi . . . [Venetia]
1556. The engraver attempts to render a 1535 description by Jacques
Cartier: a populous village, "circular and . . . completely
enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid."
Within the wooden palisade, Cartier found "some fifty houses . . .
each of fifty or more paces in length, and twelve or fifteen in
width, built completely of wood and covered in or bordered up with
large pieces of the bark and rind of trees . . . which are well and
cunningly lashed after their manner." Within each of these large
houses, many Indian families lived in common. The hill to the left,
Monte Real, is now covered by the modern Canadian city of Montreal.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
Carte geographique de la Nouvelle Franse . . . facit en 1612. From
Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages du sieur Samuel de Champlain
Xaintongeois, Paris, 1613. Engraving made from a drawing by Samuel
de Champlain as a result of his voyages to New France. The figures
depicted are Montagnais and Almouchiquas peoples; also shown are
native plants and animals. Rare Book and Special Collections
Division, Library of Congress
A flyer used to advertise concerts by Indianist composer Thurlow
Lieurance. Note that Lieurance wears a tuxedo, while the singer,
his wife, is in "Indian" dress, with furry headband and dress
ornamentation. The border of the flyer also mixes generic flowers
with an approximation of design motifs found in Plains quill- and
beadwork. Archive of Folk Culture
Sheet music covers for Indianist compositions by Thurlow Lieurance
and Charles Wakefield Cadman. Note the design motifs: lone Indian
males next to trees, tepees, the moon, and the setting sun. The
illustrations convey a sense of closeness to nature as well as an
impression, perhaps, that songs are individualistic expressions
removed from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Music Division,
Library of Congress
Farwell composed several settings of "Navajo War Dance." This piano
version (1905) shows the steady drum-like beat in the left hand and
the right-hand melody built on skips rather than on adjacent tones.
Note his instructions on how the piece is to be played: "with
severe precision of rhythm throughout, and savagely accented."
Music Division, Library of Congress
Newspaper articles such as this one from the Fairbanks Daily News-
Miner convey the popularity of Athabascan fiddling, while
identifying both the historical-traditional aspects and striking
new elements of these performances.
Winery proprietors Ed and Phyllis Pedrizzetti being interviewed in
their office at Pedrizzetti Winery, Morgan Hill, California, by
American Folklife Center fieldworkers Russell Frank and Paola
Tavarelli. (IAW-KL-B132-35) Photo by Ken Light
Frames from a contact sheet of photos taken in an Italian cemetery,
showing the Pedrizzetti family head stone. Francesca McLean
experienced a shock of recognition when she noticed these pictures
on the desk of a colleague at the Folklife Center. (IAW-DT-B012-
10A-11 & 11A-12) Photos by David A.Taylor
Frank Proffitt, Jr., plays a five-string banjo made by Tut Taylor.
D. Michael Battey made the photograph in 1991 during his in-depth
recorded interview with Proffitt at the home of Clifford Glenn home
in Sugar Grove, North Carolina.
Independence, Virginia, banjo player and string-band musician Wade
Ward is shown here with his wife and mother-in-law, Granny Porter,
1957. Ward is among many Appalachian folk musicians featured in the
collections of tapes acquired from Michael Seeger. Photo by Michael
Seeger
Ed Pedrizzetti at his winery in Morgan Hill, California, 1989. One
of the participants in the Folklife Center's Italian-Americans in
the West Project, Pedrizzetti is also the uncle of folklorist
Francesca McLean, whose comment on finding her family the subject
of study begins on page . (IAW-KL-B130-36-36A) Photo by Ken Light
On the cover of Folklife Annual 90, graffiti artist Chino Rodriguez
painting a final tribute to his brother Danny. Photo by Martha
Cooper
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